RUSSIA'S WORLD WAR III THREAT: The U.S. Navy’s New Super Frigate: Armed to ‘Sink’ Russia and China

The Navy is now finalizing the weapons, sensors and technologies it
plans to engineer into a new, more survivable and lethal Littoral Combat
Ship variant designed to perform anti-submarine and surface warfare
functions at the same time, service officials said.“You will be able to employ both of those mission areas
simultaneously,” Capt. Dan Brintzinghoffer, Frigate Program Manager,
told Scout Warrior in an interview. “This provides the fleet with
flexibility because you can employ those ships in multiple ways and
multiple venues.”The new ship, called a Frigate, will be integrated with
anti-submarine surface warfare technologies including sonar, an
over-the-horizon missile and surface-to-surface weapons such as a 30mm
gun and closer-in missiles such as the Hellfire,“You will be able to have both the long range over-the-horizon
missile and the Hellfire on board at the same time,” Brintzinghoffer
said.Some of the over-the-horizon missiles now being considered by the
Navy include the Naval Strike Missile by Kongsberg, a modified Tomahawk
missile or the Long-Range Anti-Ship missile, or LRASM made by Lockheed
and the Pentagon's research arm, DARPA. It is not yet known whether the
Frigate will be engineered with Vertical Launch Systems to fire larger,
longer-range missiles such as a Tomahawk or Standard Missile 6, among
others. However, that could be a possibility depending upon emerging
Navy requirements for weapons on the ship, developers have said.The Frigate is slated for delivery to the Navy by 2023; the platform
is an outgrowth of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship effort which
originally planned to build 52 shallow-water multi-mission ships
equipped with interchangeable groups of technologies called “mission
packages” for mine countermeasures, anti-submarine technologies and
surface warfare systems.
However, lawmakers, analysts and some members of the Navy argued that
the LCS was not “survivable” enough, meaning despite its speed of
40-knots and numerous advantages, the ship would be far too vulnerable
to enemy attack. The concern, ultimately echoed by then Secretary of
Defense Chuck Hagel, was that the ship did not have enough weapons,
armor fortifications and what’s called “blue water” combat capability to
challenge near-peer adversaries.“LCS as designed is a focused mission ship. It can do one specific
mission at a time and the combat capability to do that mission is
provided by the mission packages,” he added. “We are going to take a
modified LCS and take that as the baseline and then add changes or
modifications to improve its lethality and survivability.”The new ship will also have seven 11-meter Rigid Inflatable Boats for
short combat or expeditionary missions such as visiting, searching and
boarding other ships.At the same time the anti-submarine technologies planned for the ship
include a multi-function towed array sonar, variable depth sonar to
detect submarines and sensors combined with a submarine hunting MH-60R
helicopter.While the LCS, which is currently in service with the Navy, is
credited for its speed, maneuverability and shallow draft which enables
it to access shallow water ports larger ships are unable to reach. The
LCS ships in service this far have performed quite well, Navy officials
explained. Six LCS vessels are currently in service, a spokesman for
Naval Sea Systems Command told Scout Warrior.The initiative to engineer a more survivable and lethal LCS variant
emerged out of a multi-month effort directed by Secretary Hagel and the
formation of an entity called the Small Surface Combatant Task Force.“The Secretary of Defense directed the Navy to stop building LCS at
32 ship and do a study or come up with alternatives to see what the
remaining 20 need to be to meet the small surface combatant requirement.
The Navy put together a task force and built a series of options and a
methodology around which they were able to do an assessment of
alternatives,” Brintzinghoffer explained.The exact configuration of many of the weapons systems, which will be
complemented by next-generation computing technology, sensors and
communications gear, is still being determined.“For the last seven months we have laid out a series of design cycles
and come up with proposed changes and alternatives to improve
survivability and lethality. We have come through a number of those and
we are now recommending to the Navy leadership a design that provides a
capability to the fleet,” Brintzinghoffer explained.The emerging Frigate ship will also be equipped with next-generation
and stronger electronic warfare technologies far greater than the
existing LCS and instead comparable to current Navy Cruisers and
Destroyers, he added. In addition, the ship will be configured in what’s called a “modular”
fashion, meaning it will be engineered to accept and integrate new
technologies and weapons as they emerge such as lasers and rail guns,
Brintzinghoffer added.“Technology over the next six to seven years will enable us to use
some sort of a laser weapon or rail gun. As technology improves and we
can have a different type of gun, the Navy will have that option with an
understood set of interfaces and standards of space, weight and power,”
he said.With its mission packages, the LCS is configured to perform specific
missions, one mission at a time, Brintzinghoffer said. The Frigate is
being engineered to meet anti-submarine and surface warfare missions at
the same time.Another potential area of innovation designed to improve protection for the new Frigate is the use of “space armor” techniques.

(DGW)

RUSSIA'S WORLD WAR III THREAT: The U.S. Navy’s New Super Frigate: Armed to ‘Sink’ Russia and China
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